‘First do no harm’: Factors influencing teachers’ ability and willingness to use ICT in their subject teaching

The paper reports on a Department of Culture, Museums and Sport (DCMS) funded project which provided modest amounts of time for teachers to be freed from their classroom teaching to explore the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in their subject teaching, and to meet up together to discuss their use of new technology. The funding was sufficient to provide a day of supply cover for two groups of secondary teachers in different curriculum subjects (history and science) to meet towards the start of the academic year to discuss their use of ICT, a day of supply cover to work on their ideas and interests, and a day to meet together again towards the end of the year to share ideas and experiences.The rationale behind the project was to allow teachers the freedom to explore their own areas of interest in the area of ICT and to avoid a prescriptive or ‘coverage’ based approach. There was a conscious attempt to avoid target setting and audits and teachers were encouraged to come to the end of year meeting even if they had nothing ‘to put on the table’.The concluding section of the paper describes the outcomes of the project. The main issue to emerge was the highly positive reaction of the teachers involved. Whilst for some there were significant ICT outputs, all those involved found the process useful and enjoyable, especially the collaborative sharing process in the final session. This was in marked contrast to other ICT training experiences which many of the teachers had been involved with.